Author Mahasweta Devi immortalised in Google Doodle

A tribute to one of modern India's pre-eminent writers and activists, Mahasweta Devi, will be the first thing Google users will see today.

The search giant is celebrating the Indian Bengali fiction writer and social activist, who was honoured with the Jnanpith Award in 1996, with a new Google Doodle, marking what would have been her 92nd birthday.

Well-known for her novels and short stories that limn the plights and struggles of India's tribal people and women, Devi died at the age of 90 in Kolkata's Belle Vue Clinic hospital because of the multiple organ failure.

"The reason and inspiration for my writing are those people who are exploited and used, and yet do not accept defeat", she had said.

In recent years, she raised her voice against forcible land acquisition in Singur and Nandigram. She had once said, "My India still lives behind a curtain of darkness".

Over the years, several of her novels have been turned into films. Award winning films 'Hazar Chaurasi ki Ma' and 'Rudali' were based on her novels.

Her other literary landmarks, 'Aranyer Adhikar' or 'The Occupation of the Forest', 'Imaginary Maps', 'Breast Givers', 'Our Non-Veg Cow', won her every literary award in India, the Padma Vibhushan and the Magsaysay.